


Sakaar-via

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [19]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bruce Banner-centric, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sakaar (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27101752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: Bruce wakes up soaked in blood that's not his, on a planet that's not his.
Series: October 2020 Prompts [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Sakaar-via

**Author's Note:**

> Day 19, for the prompt: "survivor's guilt"

Bruce opened his eyes just as the last of the green leaked out of them, blinking suddenly as the world rearranged itself for a smaller perspective. Everything seemed to blur as he pushed himself up on his hands, grateful for the wall behind him that was doing most of the work in holding him upright.

Sight was a bit beyond his senses right now, so he focused on hearing instead, waiting for the familiar voice to finish the lullaby. Because that’s what had to have happened, right? That was the only way he would’ve come back, unless the fight had gone on for longer than he’d thought.

Wait. The fight. They had been… they had been fighting Ultron, and the robot army, and the city had been flying and—

Bruce finally looked around, noticing for the first time where he was: a circular, curved hall with neon white lights illuminating the dingy gold walls, most of which were covered in strange, geometric graffiti in a language he didn’t know. There were scuff marks up and down the floors, which were lined with… were those  _ bodies _ …

He quickly turned away, his gaze dropping to the floor beneath him. He should really get up—the floor was hard and cold, and he was still sore from transforming—

He struggled to his feet, putting a hand out on the wall to steady himself, and that’s when he saw the blood.

It was coating his hand, some of it already dried but some of it still oozing in a line down his arm, dripping slowly down onto the floor to join the growing pool. He yanked his hand away from the wall like it burned, but his traitorous eyes darted toward his other hand, and then down to his chest and the rest of his… 

_ No. No no no no no.  _

There was blood smeared across his entire body, thickest around his hands but still visible in red-brown streaks on every piece of exposed skin—and even the ragged pair of pants that was barely staying on bore the evidence of dark rusty stains. He felt his breath catch as he realized—and he’d known, he’d known already from the minute he saw the blood, because he was the invulnerable Avenger and there was hardly anything that could hurt him—that none of it— _ none of it _ —was his own.

_ No. _

Bruce shut his eyes again as he stumbled away from the wall, but that only shot his already-not-at-his-best balance, and he almost tripped over what looked like a discarded weapon on the floor. He wanted to rip off his own skin.

_ How could I have let this happen? _

_ I knew. I knew I couldn’t risk it again. I knew it. _

And the worst part—who was he kidding,  _ all of this _ was the worst part, all of it—were the two matching smears on his chest, bright red like they had been stamped on and impossible to ignore.

The two smears in the shape of fists.

_ How am I going to face the team like this? _

Bruce buried his head in his hands, then instantly pulled away when he felt the awful stickiness in his hair. None of the others would ever be able to look at him again; he could just see Thor’s wide eyes and Steve’s grim-set face and Clint’s dead silence and Tony’s open-mouthed shock and Nat’s—

_ Nat. _

_ Oh god. _

He remembered now, he remembered falling backwards into nothingness, and everything speeding up, and just the thought woke up the growl in the back of his brain.

_ Not now _ . Never again, if he could help it. He quickly tamped that down, taking in a shaky breath.

“Oh, you’re awake!”

Bruce startled, turning in the direction of the voice, which seemed to be coming from a pile of rocks in the corner.

“I wasn’t sure you would be awake,” the voice continued, and then Bruce had to close his eyes again for a moment, because it wasn’t just coming from the pile of rocks, it  _ was _ the pile of rocks… which stood up and walked a few steps over to him.

Bruce wasn’t sure what to say. “Who…” His own voice was rough, and he cleared it.

“Oh, yes, we haven’t done the introductions. My name is Korg and I’m made of rocks.” Korg shifted, and a few pebbles broke off his arm, proving his statement to be correct. “This here is my best friend Miek, who is not made of rocks; he’s actually a sort of insect as you can see.”

A smaller purplish creature standing next to Korg waved the knives it had in place of hands.

“Then over there we have some dead bodies, I don’t think you want to look at that, but some of us are still alive.” Korg raised a rocky arm and started pointing to the various slumped-over figures in the hall. “There’s Darxak and Spike, they don’t like any of us very much. That’s Kenneth, who’s not in a good mood today; got a spear through his foot. That’s Doug, he’s the one with the pointy helmet; and the one on the end there is Axe-Hands—only one of his hands is actually an axe and he’s a little sensitive about that—”

Miek made a squeaking noise and waved his knife hands again.

Bruce didn’t know how much more of this he could take. “What happened?” he interrupted, even though he knew his chances of getting a real answer were slim. His head was spinning, and every time he looked around at these bizarre creatures and this—this  _ wherever _ this place was, the place that every second he spent in it made him even more convinced it wasn’t Sokovia—it only made it worse. “Where am I? Why is there…?” Involuntarily, he glanced down again at the blood soaked over him, and he felt like he was going to throw up.

Korg nodded, apparently taking note of the blood as well. “Oh yeah, that was Pete.”

Now Bruce was really going to throw up. “ _ What? _ ”

“Pete!” Korg’s tone didn’t change in the slightest; were things like this just an everyday occurrence around here? “That was a close one for a while there, when you were all large and green and angry and Pete was all small and pinkish and screaming… hmm, maybe it wasn’t such a close one after all, now that I think about it. Oh, well. Pete was always kind of a dickhead anyway.”

“I… I fought people?”  _ Killed people _ , his brain immediately hissed.

“Yes, that’s kind of what we do around here. This is a sort of gladiatorial arena, I suppose you might say.” Korg gestured around the room and then paused. “Well, the real arena is outside, these are just the prisons, but it’s where the gladiators live. Most of us end up perishing here soon enough. Not me, though. Apparently people like to watch a giant pile of rocks smash things up, so the Grandmaster keeps me around for the warm-up fights.” Two rocky shoulders lifted up and down in a shrug. “That’s about the long and short of things here.”

Bruce was barely listening anymore; the rushing in his ears was making it impossible to focus. “I…” He pressed his hands up into his hair, wishing he had the Hulk’s strength so he could squeeze his brain out of his own head.

Korg nodded sympathetically. “Yes, it’s all a bit confusing, isn’t it?”

Bruce made a groaning noise before he looked back up at Korg, dropping his hands to his sides. “I have to get out of here. I have to get back to Sokovia or… or New York…”

“Sorry, mate, no one gets out of here,” Korg said. “Looks like you’ll have to settle for Sakaar-via instead. Ha-ha, you see what I did there?”

“Saka-what?”

At that moment, there was a sharp knocking at the other side of the door—which was heavily bolted, now that Bruce looked at it more closely; Korg hadn’t been lying about this being a prison—followed by a loud voice.

“Hey, the Grandmaster wants the new guy in five minutes! Make sure he’s awake or you’re getting fed to the scrappers!”

There were heavy footsteps stomping away after that, and then it was quiet again. None of the other prisoners had even looked up.

“What does that mean?” Bruce asked. “Who’s the Grandmaster and what does he want me for?”

Korg shrugged. “He probably wants to see you fight again. He looked a bit impressed with today’s show.”

“What? No. No, no, I can’t do that.” Bruce started shaking his head.

“You’re right, you are quite a bit smaller than you were earlier. That might be a problem.”

“No,” Bruce gasped. “No, I can’t do that again, I can’t—”

There was blood soaking his hands, blood over everything, and there was a roar in his head that left him with no doubt that if he lost control, the Hulk would be only too glad to shed more—because whatever this place was, it let him give in to all the violence he wanted, all the violence that Bruce had been trying to suppress and ignore and keep buried—

He dug his fingers into his palms.

He was hyperventilating now, and he couldn’t calm himself down. He could already see the tinges of green seeping through his veins, spreading quicker than he could handle, quicker than he could try to control it—

And there was no team here to stop him, no Thor with his strength and Tony with his suits and Natasha with her lullaby—

He was growing now, taller than Korg and Miek as the floor lifted away and he felt his muscles stretch and swell to the point of bursting, and  _ no no he didn’t want this this wasn’t supposed to happen no stop— _

He heard a noise that sounded like an “Ooooh” from Korg as the last piece of his mind slipped away.

And then he was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
